


A Place to Keep Your Heart Safe

by Vidriana



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Character Study, Gen, Philadelphia Flyers, Team Feels, Team as Family, Toronto Maple Leafs, team as pack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 07:58:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10301675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vidriana/pseuds/Vidriana
Summary: One reason being a werewolf in the NHL sucks, and the one James hates the most by far, is the volatility.The need for community, for acceptance, is part of being a wolf that sometimes makes it hard to play professional hockey.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gonna be honest, I have no idea how this happened. One of the people I follow on Tumblr always tags JvR as 'Wolf boy' and when I realized he looks kinda wolfy, I had to write a Werewolf AU.
> 
> Somehow this turned into a love letter to the current Leafs team. And a character study. A wolfy character study. It happens.
> 
> As always, many thanks to Dell, my amazing beta-reader, who makes sure I don't overdose on commas.

It’s not easy being a werewolf in the NHL. 

Of course, there’s the obvious issue of having a more sensitive nose than humans, which is honestly not so great when spending a lot of time in locker rooms with smelly hockey gear in them, but James manages. 

Then there’s the issue of the schedule. 82 games a season don’t really allow for automatic off days during a full moon. This means that James has to spend every game during a full moon nervous and twitching and uncomfortable in his skin, instead of changing and running around in his wolf form. It usually leaves him feeling slightly off balance for days afterwards, but he’s been in the league long enough to not let it affect his performance too much.

Another reason being a werewolf in the NHL sucks, though, and the one James hates the most by far, is the volatility. 

Werewolves spend their lives in different packs. First there’s parents and siblings, the one pack they’ll always have a connection to, no matter how far, or spread out the different members might be. For some wolves that’s the only pack they ever have, and that’s fine. Some later add their own partners and maybe children to it, but the deep connection is always there.

For athletes, it’s quite common that team becomes pack. James had experienced it already with the USNDP and later in college, the way playing and winning together could form a bond almost as strong as the one he’s carried with him his whole life. He feels as close to his teammates as he does to Trevor or Brendan and he’s so grateful for the feeling of _home_ that he thought he’d lost forever, when he moved out of his parents’ house. 

He’d thought the same thing would happen when he got to the NHL. And it did. Sort of. 

His first year with the Flyers, they make the Stanley Cup final. It’s exhilarating in a way playing hockey had never been before. They aren’t just playing together, they’re fighting together, fighting for each other and for a win. He feels like Richie is the perfect pack leader, everything about him designed to lead them to victory and James has never felt surer of his place. He’s meant to be right here, on the ice, with his pack, following Richie into battle. This is where he belongs.

And then they lose.

It hurts and it makes James feel lost, but when he looks around the defeated faces of his teammates afterwards, he can’t help but think that this was just the beginning. They’re going to do it again next year and they’re going to win. He can feel it.

But that’s not what happens. James throws everything he has into the game and he keeps scoring and scoring, but it’s not enough. They get swept by the Bruins in the second round and James feels a desperation, a steady feeling of wrongness creep in. His team had been struggling the whole season, there’d been in-fighting and hierarchy struggles, and James didn’t care, James just wanted them to win. _Next year_ , he thinks. They can do it next year and then everything will be fine.

Then Richie and Carts get traded and James loses the first real pack leader he’s ever had. Philadelphia stops feeling like home after that. His team stops feeling like pack. He still plays hockey, he still loves it, but he doesn’t feel like he belongs anymore.

He breaks his foot midway through the season and that’s it for him. He still manages to play a couple of regular season games and even some of the playoffs, but he doesn’t feel like he’s able to help his team at all and heads into the off-season already dreading the next fall, the next time they’ll fail. He just wants to feel like he belongs again.

Then he gets traded to the Leafs.

It’s not a shock. The Leafs need some offense, some goals, and James can provide that. The Flyers need defense, so they traded him for Luke Schenn. It makes sense, objectively. He still feels abandoned. Unwanted by a team that he’d hoped to make his family. The need for community, for acceptance, is another part of being a wolf that sometimes makes it hard to play professional hockey. It’s okay, though. It’s a fresh start.

The mood in Toronto is weird. Although the whole city wants them to win so badly, few people actually expect them to, so it comes as a surprise when the lockout-shortened season ends and the Leafs find themselves in a playoff spot. Honestly, it’s mostly due to Reimer that they ever made it there, but James is happy nonetheless. There’s nothing like a successful playoff-streak to make a team feel like pack.

They don’t make it far, don’t make it out of the first round, in fact, and James goes into the summer still feeling lost and alone. He spends time with his parents and goes running with his brothers in their wolf forms and it helps a bit. He knows that there’ll always be a place for him here, even if he can’t make one for himself in his new team. He hopes things will look up from here. He’s wrong about that. 

James spends the next two seasons watching as he and his team fall short again and again. They don’t make the playoffs, in fact they get top 10 draft picks in both years. James knows it’s good that new talent is coming, but the new guys aren’t ready to play, not yet, and so they keep losing. In the summer they lose Phil, and when training camp starts it feels like half the team is gone. There are new guys, of course, to replace the ones that get traded away, but James doesn’t know how long they’ll stay, doesn’t even bother trying to make them feel like pack. 

They get Babcock and he’s a good coach, but he’s not actually on the team, so he’s not pack and he can’t be the leader. Dion tries his best, but he doesn’t make James feel the electric, almost devoted passion that Richie had managed to inspire.

In his fourth season with the Leafs, he fractures his foot again and has to watch from the sidelines as his team finishes dead last in the league. At this point he thinks he’ll never be able to feel at home on the ice again.

And then something shifts. James doesn’t know what exactly it is. Maybe it’s just Auston, joining their team as the professed saviour, but more likely it’s all the new faces. The rookies bring an excitement and exuberance into the dressing room that had been missing for a while now and James can feel himself getting pulled in again, even though he should know better by now. The Leafs can’t be pack, they’re too volatile, too inconsistent. They’ll only break his heart in the long run and he’s better off finding a pack somewhere else.

Even though he knows all this, he can’t help but get swept along. Auston breaks a record during his first game and James can only watch in awe. It’s not the kind of leadership he wanted, but it makes him feel like there might be something here, something worth fighting for.

The next game, he’s on a line with Mitch, another new rookie, and they tear it up. They beat the Bruins and even though it’s only the second game of the season, it feels like a preview of what’s to come. 

Suddenly there’s no dejected silence in the locker room after games. Even when they lose, they’re filled with an unstoppable desire to keep going, to do better next time, because they know they can be better. 

For a while, James waits for someone to step up and take control of the team. He knows that every successful team has a leader, someone who picks them up when they need it, who focuses their attention where it needs to be, who gives them someone to fight for, to prove themselves to. It doesn’t happen. 

It takes a while for him to figure out that, even though they don’t have a leader, everyone still takes responsibility in smaller ways. Mo takes care of the rookies and handles the media; Matt keeps everyone’s spirits up; Freddie keeps them in the game most nights and spreads an aura of calm in the locker room; Mitchy is a ball of energy who manages to infect everyone. The list goes on.

Even though they don’t have a leader, they've still somehow managed to become a pack and James hadn’t even noticed.

He hadn’t noticed how effortlessly he fits into his line with Mitch and Bozie, how he’s looking forward to every single practice session again, how team meals are filled with chirping and laughter, how they all hang out together on road trips. 

It reminds him of spending time with his brothers, but it takes a while for him to realize what that means. His team has become his pack again. In a sneaky, quiet way, they’ve become his new home.

And when they’re in Arizona close to the full moon, and Mo and Jake tell him to go run through the desert in his wolf form so they can film it and put it on instagram, he knows for sure that he wants to stay with them forever.

In the end, winning isn’t what makes a pack, and a leader isn’t either. It’s about community and belonging and being able to make people your home. 

And as James looks at his teammates, racing across the ice, he’s never felt more at home anywhere else.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading this even half as much as I enjoyed writing this!
> 
> If you want, feel free to come talk to me on [Tumblr](https://vidrianah.tumblr.com), where I mostly cry about the Leafs, Pens, and miscellaneous other hockey players.


End file.
